It's A Wonderful Life, What You Make Of It Is Up To You

My new book is a collection of 80 poems that I have written across a fair number of years. As a best selling Author, I have a deep love of words and of storytelling, poetry is merely an extension of that passion.  Writting poetry has truly helped me to overcome terrible loss, of family, friends, and comrades. Whether I could have dealt with this without this comfort, I will never know.  As I draw closer to the end of my working life, I also realise what an incredible blessing ageing is.  It gives you time to get things wrong, learn from your mistakes and go again, hopefully not repeating the same errors as before.  This is a truly amazing experience and the opportunity to share such experiences with others is inspirational.
 
I am a total believer in the goodness within people, but also realise not everybody will get a chance to show it.  The secret, or not, is in the desire to give something back to others, to society and simply be the best you can be.  Just doing good things can change your life and the life of others for the better.
 
Growing up I used to love listening to the stories told by old folks and strangely, I appreciate them now more than ever.  Most people would like to be remembered for the good they have done and it seems to me that we are particularly able to do this later in life.  I can't explain how much I enjoy mentoring students, new entries to the business world, or sharing my passion for leadership and management; none of which is new to me, but giving back just gets more important as I get older.
 
So, my collection of poems seeks to cover as broad a rangt of topics as possible.  It includes poems relating to football, police, politicians and their behaviour, standards in life, the beauty of our planet, the importance of caring for others and the tranquility of our National Arboretum, amongst many other topics.  I have followed every poem with a set of comments as to why I wrote them, what they meant to me, or simply what I hope readers may take from the message.  If my poems can help one person or convince anybody to simply focus on being kind to others, then all of the effort in recording and compiling this book will have been worthwhile.